The leaves of autumn and winter still lie strewn within the garden of the Stone People.
Yet all around is evidence of new growth
The hand of spring may be seen
in the creation of
bright daffodils, jonquils, bright little creatures
who herald the beginning of a new cycle.

In Greek Mythology there is no creator of the world. Greek mythology contains theogonies, which are stories of the birth of the gods. Hesiod’s Theogony provides successively related stories, which build up to provide an impression of the divine aspects of the world. Thus, the creator of the world is the poet. It is the poet, a creative being, who brings into being the ‘world’ in which men live. The very name poet was etymologically derived from the word ‘makar’. To build from matter is sublimely great, But only gods and poets can create

According to Hesiod’s theogonic poetry Prometheus was born of the daughter of Okeanos and created mankind out of clay. The name Prometheus means ‘he who knows in advance’. He is the creative spirit, attributed with having the gift of insight.

The story of Prometheus giving fire to man, the gift that proved to be the means by which man might master many crafts, is legendary. For the sin of giving man the greatest resource possible Prometheus was punished by being nailed fast in chains beneath the open sky and having his liver eaten, on a daily basis, by an eagle.

In Aeschylus’s ‘Prometheus Bound’ Prometheus describes what mankind was like and speaks of the gifts he gives to the human race. “For seeing they saw not, and hearing they understood not, but like the shapes we see in dreams they wrought all the days of their lives in confusion. Til I revealed to them the grouping of letters, to be a memorial and record of the past, the mistress of the arts and mother of the Muses And then I found for them the art of using numbers That master science.”

It is of little concern whether all human arts ‘really’ came from Prometheus for the very notion of him infusing man with a creative fire stick and providing memory appeals to the poet’s imagination. This myth has breathed life into the imagination of writer’s from Goethe to Australian A.D. Hope and lead to some stunning literature.

For the purposes of this discussion let us consider the situation where creativity is blocked by the forces of materialism and choked by the Christian work ethic. Draining capitalism and a general obsession with money has polluted the rivers of the writer whose dreams are mingled with all sorts of things that seem to bear no relation to one another. Like Prometheus the modern worker sees ‘above them sailing o’er life’s barren crags the vulture’ and seem helpless to change the situation.

Prometheus was a prophetic seer who could see into the future and had knowledge about who would depose Zeus himself. However, it does not take a prophet to see what is happening in our current environment. People are so pressed for time that they have little creative energy. Society has become work obsessed and the status once assigned to class is now assigned to work. The intrinsic flaw in this is that individuals feel trapped in the cogs of the work machine, facing a Promethean like sentence ‘Shall it then be unavailing, all this toil for human culture?’ .

Prometheus claimed to have given man ‘Hope’. Clinging to hope provides the modern writer with a means to palliate the pain. There is a choice. What is called for in this situation is a Promethean style theft and rebellion. It is time to be unbound and released of some of the toil and to ride the winged horse, Pegasus, believed to be the ally of poets and retrieve the creative torch.

Longfellow describes just such an action when he writes in his poem ‘Prometheus’ Yet all bards, whose hearts unblighted Honour and believe the presage Hold aloft their torches lighted Gleaming through the realms benighted As they onward bear the message!

Writing on a daily basis helps us to bear the message and keep the Promethean fire burning. Nearly half of the population says that they are pressed for time but those who stop to steal some creative time to write say that they feel a release not dissimilar to what Prometheus must have felt when he was unbound, thirty thousand years later, by Hercules. When people made a daily habit of writing they feel ‘heavenward inspiration’ and say that they are able to make clearer choices.

Ash lies here
Resting, sleeping
Just as I am resting and sleeping, restorative sleep
While I am here.

He lies, watching Mt Difficult
Whose Guardian watches over us.
This is a place of power and awe,
a place where the land nurtures those who walk upon it.

Explorer, Major Thomas Mitchell waxed poetic as he crossed the western plains and Gariwerd hove into view in the winter of 1836.

“Every day we passed over land which, for natural fertility and beauty, could scarcely be surpassed; over streams of unfailing abundance, and the plains covered with the richest pasturage. Stately trees and majestic mountains adorned the ever varying scenery in this region, the most southern of all Australia and the best”.

Near the Hopkins River to the south-east of Gariwerd, the expedition found a Djab wurrung woman’s basket – possibly abandoned as she fled in fright from the alien invaders. The contents of the reed-woven basket provide a glimpse at the diversity of diet enjoyed by western Victorian Aboriginal people before European Settlement.

The bag contained “three snakes, three rats, about two pounds of a small fish, like white bait; crayfish; and a quantity of small root of the cichoraceous plant tao, usually found growing on the plains with bright yellow flower (the native yam daisy). There were also in the bag various bodkins (bone points for sewing) and colouring stones (for painting and decoration, and two mogos or stone hatchets.

source: The People of the Gariwerd – Gibb Wettenhall

Here in Wartook, in the winter of 2008, the unsurpassed fertility and beauty is as evident as it was when Major Mitchell passed by. Alas the indigenous people and their green ways, are all gone now. But I can live  similarly.

Today I went out with my bowl and, rather than colouring stones, my digital camera. I collected a rich harvest from the garden where Ash lies sleeping, warm within the bowels of the earth. I have made a chicken casserole for dinner (no beheaded chickens from here) and I will serve it with fresh silver beet, fresh from the garden. The eggs were warm to touch when I gathered them from my ‘girls’. It is not quite a bush larder but the things I have gathered, the fresh lemons and oranges, eggs and beet will nourish and sustain me.

“Historically, several inulin-laden foods, especially chicory, dahlia, Jerusalem artichokes, murnong, and yacon, have been used as staple food or as sustenance crops. Australian aborigines ate murnong, a tuberous plant, in the 19th century as their main vegetable food with a reported daily intake of 200-300 grams (Gott, 1984).”

Running down Kangaroos or finding a wombat down its burrow was a chancy business for the indigenous people who lived in the Gariwerd, so bringing back something to eat was often left to women.

Armed with their digging sticks and baskets, each with a carrying capacity of up to 30 kilograms, the Djab wurrung and Jardwadjali women and children gathered immense quantities of tuberous roots and edible food. One of the most important year-long food stapies was native yam daisy, or murnong. Its yeallow dandelion like flowers once covered the grasslands in their millions. Robinson describes the sight in 1841 of “women spread over the plain as far as I could see them… each with a load as much as she could carry.”

Over a period of a few years the women would dig over much of the plains country within their range to get at the sweet tasting, starch rich clumps of murnong tubers.

If they were taking such vast quantities, why did the murnong not become scarce? The answer is that the women only thinned the clumps of tubers. Moreover, the digging aerated the soil, incorporating litter and ash, thereby cultivating and fertilizing the tubers of murnong and other edible orchid and lily species.

During my time at Wartook, within what has been such an abundant garden, I have had time to reflect and learn from the techniques these early people employed and how I can apply this to my creative life. Digging, foraging, cultivating, fertilizing, thinning, preparing wild gardens where community members can till the ground and develop their gardens. It is all a part of the daily routine here at Wartook, an important part of my creative life.

“There’s an emu in the Milky Way and two bright stars, and as the stars get brighter during the month of May, the emu’s neck stretches and that’s when you know there’s a lot of emu eggs around”

The Djab wurrung and Jardwadjali knew that when Canopus the Dog Star rose above the horizon in early spring it was time to search for emu eggs, which were considered a particular delicacy.

Within the Garden of the Stone People there is a very special temple, built by nature and the Stone People.
From this temple you can see Mt Difficult, home to the guardian of Gariwerd who watches over this remote, isolated valley.
All is quiet here today. The old people who sat in counsel have long gone.
I sit wondering why the Stone People have bought me here and wonder what our counsel meeting will reveal.

Heather Blakey – July 25th 2008

Bunjil was known as a good spirit who created things as they are today and gave the tribes their law and culture.

Here at Wartook, sheltered by day and as I sleep, protected by the guardian, the spirit of the escarpment, I am reminded that the people who walked this land, long before European settlers arrived knew that all is connected – land, spirit, people.

“Gariwerd (the Grampians) was a cultural mecca because of the significance it holds. The five main (Aboriginal) mobs around the Grampians would meet up at Gariwerd whenever there was any traditional business. It was a place for celebrations and a place to resolve disputes. It was like Parliament House for the Aborigines, which is why it is the most culturally important place in the region.” (Hazel McDonald)

The people who came here had a very special relationship with the Creator Spirit, with the land and indeed with all of creation. To them, everything was sacred – the animals, plants, hills, mountains, trees, leaves, rocks, stones, river, lakes, oceans, everything. They believed that all have as much right to exist as humans do. If we dishonour their right, we dishonour our own right to be.

As I spend quiet, meditative days here, watching as the escarpment changes colour and mood I know that this is a place where I will be able to make tracks in the land… it is the place where my new story is unfolding.

This place, scattered with granite boulders, remains of old gardens, decorated with bright wattle is a place that speaks to me, a place where I know that I am, like every living organism, the centre of the universe. I know that this is a place where I can safely go deep into sacred wells of knowledge that is deep within us, and come up with a new vision. It is a place that tells me ‘you are mine and I am yours.’ It is a place where I feel called by the land to enter the land, where there is a spiritual wilderness that awaits my tentative steps to go further into the vastness of the cosmos. It is a place where the Creator Spirit, Bunji, tenderly stirs a sense of inner tranquility, without taking away my peace.